Metamorphoses of the SoulPaths of Experience Vol. 1

Schmidt Number: S-2073

On-line since: 15th January, 2008

LECTURE 3
The Mission of Truth

Berlin, 22nd October 1909

We
were able to close our lecture on the Mission of Anger
(illustrated in Prometheus Bound)
with the saying of Heraclitus: “Never will you find the boundaries of
the soul, by whatever paths you search for them; so all-embracing is
the soul's being.” We came to know this depth in the working and
interplay of the powers of the soul; and the truth of the saying came home to
us especially when we turned our attention to the most deeply inward part of
man's being. Man is most spiritual in his Ego, and that was our
starting-point.

The Ego
complements those other elements of man's being which he has in common with
minerals, plants and animals. He has his physical body in common with
minerals, plants and animals; his etheric body in common with animals and
plants; his astral body in common with animals. Through his Ego he first
becomes man in the true sense and is able to progress from stage to stage. It
is the Ego that works upon the other members of his being; it cleanses and
purifies the instincts, inclinations, desires and passions of the astral
body, and will lead the etheric and physical bodies on to ever-higher stages.
But if we look at the Ego, we find that this high member of man's being is
imprisoned, as it were, between two extremes.

Through his Ego,
man is intended to become increasingly a being who has a firm centre in
himself. His thoughts, feelings and will-impulses should spring from this
centre. The more he has a firm and well-endowed centre in himself, the more
will he have to give to the world; the stronger and richer will be his
activities and everything that goes out from him. If he is unable to find
this central point in himself, he will be in danger of losing himself through
a misconceived activity of his Ego. He would lose himself in the world and go
ineffectually through life. Or he may lapse into the other extreme. Just as
he may lose himself if he fails to strengthen and enrich his Ego, so, if he
thinks of nothing but developing his Ego, he may fall into the other extreme
of selfish isolation from all human community. Here, on this other side, we
find egoism, with its hardening and secluding influence, which can divert the
Ego from its proper path. The Ego is confined within these two
extremes.

In considering
the human soul, we called three of its members the Sentient Soul, the
Intellectual Soul and the Consciousness Soul. We also came to recognise
— surprisingly, perhaps, for many people — that anger acts as a
kind of educator of the Sentient Soul. A one-sided view of the lecture on the
mission of anger could give scope for many objections. But if we go into the
underlying significance of this view of anger, we shall find in it an answer
to many important riddles of life.

In what sense is
anger an educator of the soul — especially the Sentient Soul —
and a forerunner of love? Is it not true that anger tends to make a man lose
control of himself and engage in wild, immoral and loveless behaviour? If we
are thinking only of wild, unjustified outbursts of anger, we shall get a
false idea of what the mission of anger is. It is not through unjustified
outbreaks of anger that anger educates the soul, but through its inward
action on the soul.

Let us again
imagine two teachers faced with children who have done something wrong. One
teacher will burst into anger and hastily impose a penalty. The other
teacher, though unable to break out into anger, is also incapable of acting
rightly, with perfect tranquility, out of his Ego, in the sense described
yesterday. How will the behaviour of two such teachers differ? An outburst of
anger by one of them involves more than the penalty imposed on the child.
Anger agitates the soul and works upon it in such a way as to destroy
selfishness. Anger acts like a poison on selfishness, and we find that in
time it gradually transforms the powers of the soul and makes it capable of
love. On the other hand, if a teacher has not yet attained inner tranquility
and yet inflicts a coldly calculated penalty, he will — since anger
will not work in him as a counteracting poison — become increasingly a
cold egoist.

Anger works
inwardly and can be regarded as a regulator for unjustified outbursts of
selfishness. Anger must be there or it could not be fought against. In
overcoming anger the soul continually improves itself. If a man insists on
getting something done that he considers right and loses his temper over it,
his anger will dampen the egoistic forces in his soul; it reduces their
effective power. Just because anger is overcome and a man frees himself from
it and rises above it, his selflessness will be enhanced and the selflessness
of his Ego continually strengthened. The scene of this interplay between
anger and the Ego is the Sentient Soul. A different interplay between the
soul and other experiences takes its course in the Intellectual
Soul.

Although the
soul has attributes which it must overcome in order to rise above them, it
must also develop inwardly certain forces which it should love and cherish,
however spontaneously they may arise. They are forces to which the soul may
initially yield, so that, when it finally asserts itself, it is not weakened,
but strengthened, by the experience. If a man were incapable of anger when
called upon to assert himself in action, he would be the weaker for
it.

It is just when
a man lovingly immerses himself in his own soul that his soul is strengthened
and an ascent to higher stages of the Ego comes within reach. The outstanding
element that the soul may love within itself, leading not to egoism but to
selflessness, is truth. Truth educates the Intellectual Soul. While anger is
an attribute of the soul that must be overcome if a man is to rise to higher
stages, truth should be loved and valued from the start. An inward
cultivation of truth is essential for the progress of the soul.

How is it that
devotion to truth leads man upwards from stage to stage? The opposites of
truth are falsehood and error. We shall see how man progresses in so far as
he overcomes falsehood and error and pursues truth as his great
ideal.

A higher truth
must be the aim of man's endeavour, while he treats anger as an enemy to be
increasingly abolished. He must love truth and feel himself most intimately
united with it. Nevertheless, eminent poets and thinkers have rightly claimed
that full possession of truth is beyond human reach. Lessing,
[ 21 ]
for example, says that pure truth is not for men, but only a perpetual
striving towards it. He speaks of truth as a distant goddess whom men may
approach but never reach. When the nature of truth stirs the soul to strive
for it, the soul can be impelled to rise from stage to stage. Since there is
this everlasting search for truth, and since truth is so manifold in meaning,
all we can reasonably say is that man must set out to grasp truth and to
kindle in himself a genuine sense of truth. Hence we cannot speak of a
single, all-embracing truth.

In this lecture
we will consider the idea of truth in its right sense, and it will become
clear that by cultivating a sense of truth in his inner life man will be
imbued with a progressive power that leads him to selflessness.

Man strives
towards truth; but when people try to form views concerning one thing or
another, we find that in the most varied realms of life conflicting opinions
are advanced. When we see what different people take for truth, we might
think that the striving for truth leads inevitably to the most contradictory
views and standpoints. However, if we look impartially at the facts, we shall
find guidelines which show how it is that men who are all seeking truth,
arrive at such a diversity of opinions.

Let us take an
example. The American multimillionaire, Harriman,
[ 22 ]
who died recently, was
a rarity among millionaires in concerning himself with thoughts of general
human interest. His aphorisms, found after his death, include a remarkable
statement. He wrote: No man in this world is indispensable. When one goes,
another is there to take his place. When I lay down my work, another will
come and take it up. The railways will continue running, dividends will be
paid; and so, strictly speaking, it is with all men.

This
millionaire, accordingly, rose to the point of declaring as a generally valid
truth — no man is indispensable!

Let us compare
this statement with a remark by a man who worked for many years in Berlin and
gained great distinction through his lecture courses on the lives of
Michelangelo, Raphael and Goethe — I mean the art-historian Herman
Grimm.
[ 23 ]
When Treitschke
[ 24 ]
died, Herman Grimm wrote of him roughly as
follows: Now Treitschke is gone, and people only now realise what he
accomplished. No-one can take his place and continue his work in the same
way. A feeling prevails that in the circle where he taught, everything is
changed. Note that Herman Grimm did not add the words, so it is with all
men.

Here we have two
men, the American millionaire and Herman Grimm, who arrive at exactly
opposite truths. How does this come about? If we carefully compare the two
statements, we shall find a clue. Bear in mind that Harriman says pointedly:
When I lay down my work, someone else will continue it. He does not get away
from himself. The other thinker, Herman Grimm, leaves himself entirely out of
account. He does not speak about himself, or ask what sort of opinions or
truths others might gain from him. He merges himself in his subject. Anyone
with a feeling for the matter will have no doubt as to which of the two spoke
truth. We need only ask — who carried on Goethe's work when he laid it
down? We can feel that Harriman's reflections suffer from the fact that he
fails to get away from himself. Up to a point we may conclude that it is
prejudicial to truth if someone in search of truth cannot get away from
himself. Truth is best served when the seeker leaves himself out of the
reckoning. Would it be true to say, then, that truth is already something
that gives us a view (Ansicht) of things?

A view, in the
sense of an opinion, is a thought which reflects the outer world. When we
form a thought or reach a decision about something, does it follow that we
have a true picture of it?

Suppose you take
a photograph of a remarkable tree. Does the photograph give a true picture of
the tree? It shows the tree from one side only, not the whole reality of the
tree. No-one could form a true image of the tree from this one photograph.
How could anyone who has not seen the tree be brought nearer to the truth of
it? If the tree were photographed from four sides, he could collate the
photographs and arrive finally at a true picture of the tree, not dependent
on a particular standpoint.

Now let us apply
this example to human beings. A man who leaves himself out of account when
forming a view of something is doing much the same as the photographer who
goes all round the tree. He eliminates himself by conscious action. When we
form an opinion or take a certain view, we must realise that all such
opinions depend on our personal standpoint, our habits of mind and our
individuality. If we then try to eliminate these influences from our search
for truth, we shall be acting as the photographer did in our example. The
first condition for acquiring a genuine sense of truth is that we should get
away from ourselves and see clearly how much depends on our personal point of
view. If the American multimillionaire had got away from himself he would
have known that there was a difference between him and other men.

An example from
everyday life has shown us, that if a man fails to realise how much his
personal standpoint or point of departure influences his views, he will
arrive at narrow opinions, not at the truth. This is apparent also on a wider
scale. Anyone who looks at the true spiritual evolution of mankind, and
compares all the various “truths” that have arisen in the course
of time, will find — if he looks deeply enough — that when people
pronounce a “truth” they ought first of all to get away from
their individual outlooks. It will then become clear that the most varied
opinions concerning truth are advanced because men have not recognised to
what extent their views are restricted by their personal
standpoints.

A less familiar
example may lead to a deeper understanding of this matter. If we want to
learn more about beauty, we turn to aesthetics, which deals with the forms of
beauty. Beauty is something we encounter in the outer world. How can we learn
the truth about it? Here again we must free ourselves from the restrictions
imposed by our personal characteristics.

Take for example
the 19th century German thinker, Solger.
[ 25 ]
He wished to investigate the
nature of beauty in accordance with his idea of truth. He could not deny that
we meet with beauty in the external world; but he was a man with a one-sided
theosophical outlook, and this was reflected in his theory of aesthetics. His
interest in a beautiful picture was confined to the shining through it of the
only kind of spirituality he recognised. For him, an object was beautiful
only in so far as the spiritual was manifest through it. Solger was a
one-sided theosophist; he sought to explain sense-perceptible phenomena in
terms of the super-sensible; but he forgot that sense-perceptible reality has
a justified existence on its own account. Unable to escape from his
preconceptions, he sought to attain to the spiritual by way of a misconceived
theosophy.

Another writer
on aesthetics, Robert Zimmermann,
[ 26 ]
came to an exactly opposite
conclusion. As against Solger's misconceived theosophical aesthetics,
Zimmermann based his aesthetics on a misconceived anti-theosophical outlook.
His sole concern was with symmetry and anti-symmetry, harmony and discord. He
had no interest in going beyond the beautiful to that which manifests through
it. So his aesthetics were as one-sided as Solger’s. Every striving for
truth can be vitiated if the seeker fails to recognise that he must first
endeavour to get away from himself. This can be achieved only gradually; but
the primary, inexorable demand is, that if we are to advance towards truth we
must leave ourselves out of account and quite forget ourselves. Truth has a
unique characteristic: a man can strive for it while remaining entirely
within himself and yet — while living in his Ego — he can acquire
something which, fundamentally speaking, has nothing to do with the egoistic
ego.

Whenever a man
tries in life to get his own way in some matter, this is an expression of his
egoism. Whenever he wants to force on others something he thinks right and
loses his temper over it, that is an expression of his self-seeking. This
self-seeking must be subdued before he can attain to truth. Truth is
something we experience in our most inward being — and yet it liberates
us increasingly from ourselves. Of course, it is essential that nothing save
the love of truth should enter into our striving for it. If passions,
instincts and desires, from which the Sentient Soul must be cleansed before
the Intellectual Soul can strive for truth, come into it, they will prevent a
man from getting away from himself and will keep his Ego tied to a fixed
viewpoint. In the search for truth, the only passion that must not be
discarded is love.

Truth is a lofty
goal. This is shown by the fact that truth, in the sense intended here, is
recognised today in one limited realm only. It is only in the realm of
mathematics that humanity in general has reached the goal of truth, for here
men have curbed their passions and desires and kept them out of the way. Why
are all men agreed that three times three makes nine and not ten? Because no
emotion comes into it, Men would agree on the highest truths if they had gone
as far with them as they have with mathematics. The truths of mathematics are
grasped in the inmost soul, and because they are grasped in this way, we
possess them. We would still possess them if a hundred or a thousand people
were to contradict us; we would still know that three times three makes nine
because we have grasped this fact inwardly. If the hundred or thousand people
who take a different view were to get away from themselves, they would come
to the same truth.

What, then, is
the way to mutual understanding and unity for mankind? We understand one
another in the field of reckoning and counting because here we have met the
conditions required. Peace, concord and harmony will prevail among men to the
extent that they find truth. That is the essential thing: that we should seek
for truth as something to be found only in our own deepest being; and should
know that truth ever and again draws men together, because from the innermost
depth of every human soul its light shines forth.

So is truth the
leader of mankind towards unity and mutual understanding, and also the
precursor of justice and love. Truth is a precursor we must cherish, while
the other precursor, anger, that we came to know yesterday, must be overcome
if we are to be led by it away from selfishness. That is the mission of
truth: to become the object of increasing love and care and devotion on our
part. Inasmuch as we devote ourselves inwardly to truth, our true self gains
in strength and will enable us to cast off self-interest. Anger
weakens us; truth strengthens us.

Truth is a stern
goddess; she demands to be at the centre of a unique love in our souls. If
man fails to get away from himself and his desires and prefers something else
to her, she takes immediate revenge. The English poet Coleridge has rightly
indicated how a man should stand towards truth. If, he says, a man loves
Christianity more than truth, he will soon find that he loves his own
Christian sect more than Christianity, and then he will find that he loves
himself more than his sect.

Very much is
implicit in these words. Above all, they signify that to strive against truth
leads to humanly degrading egoism. Love of truth is the only love that sets
the Ego free. And directly man gives priority to anything else, he falls
inevitably into self-seeking. Herein lies the great and most serious
importance of truth for the education of the human soul. Truth conforms to no
man, and only by devotion to truth can truth be found. Directly man prefers
himself and his own opinions to the truth, he becomes anti-social and
alienates himself from the human community. Look at people who make no
attempt to love truth for its own sake but parade their own opinions as the
truth: they care for nothing but the content of their own souls and are the
most intolerant. Those who love truth in terms of their own views and
opinions will not suffer anyone to reach truth along a quite different path.
They put every obstacle in the way of anyone with different abilities, who
comes to opinions unlike their own. Hence the conflicts that so often arise
in life. An honest striving for truth leads to human understanding, but the
love of truth for the sake of one's own personality leads to intolerance and
the destruction of other people's freedom.

Truth is
experienced in the Intellectual Soul. It can be sought for and attained
through personal effort only by beings capable of thought. Inasmuch as truth
is acquired by thinking, we must realise very clearly that there are two
kinds of truth. First we have the truth that comes from observing the world
of Nature around us and investigating it bit by bit in order to discover its
truths, laws and wisdom. When we contemplate the whole range of our
experience of the world in this way, we come to the kind of truth that can be
called the truth derived from “reflective” thinking — we
first observe the world and then think about our findings.

We saw yesterday
that the entire realm of Nature is permeated with wisdom, and that wisdom
lives in all natural things. In a plant there lives the idea of the plant,
and this we can arrive at by reflective thought. Similarly, we can discern
the wisdom that lives in the plant. By thus looking out on the world we can
infer that the world is born of wisdom, and that through the activity of our
thinking we can rediscover the element that enters into the creation of the
world. That is the kind of truth to be gained by reflective
thought.

There are also
other truths. These cannot be gained by reflective thought, but only by going
beyond everything that can be learnt from the outer world. In ordinary life
we can see at once that when a man constructs a tool or some other
instrument, he has to formulate laws that are not part of the outer world.
For example, no-one could learn from the outer world how to construct a
clock, for the laws of Nature are not so arranged as to provide for the
appearance of clocks as a natural product. That is a second kind of truth: we
come to it by thinking out something not given to us by observation or
experience of the outer world. Hence there are these two kinds of truth, and
they must be kept strictly apart, one derived from reflective thought and the
other from “creative” thought.

How can a truth
of this second kind be verified? The inventor of a clock can easily prove
that he had thought it out correctly. He has to show that the clock does what
he expects. Anything we think out in advance must prove itself in practice:
it must yield results that can be recognised in the external world. The
truths of Spiritual Science or Anthroposophy are of this kind. They cannot be
found by observing external experience.

For example, no
findings in the realm of outer Nature can establish the truth we have often
dwelt on in connection with the immortal kernel of man's being: the truth
that the human Ego appears again and again on earth in successive
incarnations. Anyone who wishes to acquire this truth must raise himself
above ordinary experience. He must grasp in his soul a truth that has then to
be made real in outer life. A truth of this kind cannot be proved in the same
way as truths of the first kind, gained by what we have called reflective
thought. It can be proven only by showing how it applies to life and is
reflected there. If we look at life with the knowledge that the soul
repeatedly returns and ever and again goes through a series of events and
experiences between birth and death, we shall find how much satisfaction, how
much strength and fruitfulness, these thoughts can bring. Or again, if we ask
how the soul of a child can be helped to develop and grow stronger, if we
presuppose that an eternally existent soul is here working its way into a new
life, then this truth will shine in on us and give proof of its fruitfulness
in daily experience. Any other proofs are false. The only way in which a
truth of this kind can be confirmed is by giving proof of its validity in
daily life. Hence there is a vast difference between these two kinds of
truth. Those of the second kind are grasped in the spirit and then verified
by observing their influence on outer life.

What then is the
educational effect of these two kinds of truth on the human soul? It makes a
great difference whether a man devotes himself to truths that come from
reflective thought or to those that come from creative thought. If we steep
ourselves in the wisdom of Nature and create in ourselves a true reflection
of it, we can rightly say that we have in ourselves something of the creative
activity from which the life of Nature springs. But here a distinction must
be made. The wisdom of Nature is directly creative and gives rise to the
reality of Nature in all its fullness, but the truth we derive from thinking
about Nature is only a passive image; in our thinking it has lost its power.
We may indeed acquire a wide, open-minded picture of natural truth, but the
creative, productive element is absent from it. Hence the immediate effect of
this picture of truth on the development of the human Ego is desolating. The
creative power of the Ego is crippled and devitalised; the Self loses
strength and can no longer stand up to the world, if it is concerned only
with reflective thoughts. Nothing else does so much to isolate the Ego, to
make it withdraw into itself and look with hostility on the world. A man can
become a cold egoist if he is intent only on investigating the outer world.
Why does he want this knowledge? Does he mean to place it at the service of
the Gods?

If a man desires
only this kind of truth, he wants it for himself, and he will be on the way
to becoming a cold egoist and misogynist in later life. He will become a
recluse or will sever himself from mankind in some other way, for he wants to
possess the content of the world as his own truth. All forms of seclusion and
hostility towards humanity can be found on this path. The soul becomes
increasingly dried up and loses its sense of human fellowship. It becomes
ever more impoverished, although the truth should enrich it. Whether a man
turns into a recluse or a one-sided eccentric makes no difference; in both
cases a hardening process will overtake his soul. Hence we see that the more
a man confines himself to this kind of reflective thought, the less fruitful
his soul will be. Let us try to understand why this is so.

Consider the
realms of nature and suppose that we have before us an array of plants. They
have been formed by the living wisdom which calls forth their inherent
productive power. Now an artist comes along. His soul receives the picture
that Nature sets before him. He does not merely think about it; he opens
himself to Nature's productive power and lets it work upon him. He creates a
work of art which does not embody merely an act of thinking; it is imbued
with productive power. Then comes someone who tries to get behind the picture
and to extract a thought from it. He ponders over it. In this way its reality
is filtered and impoverished. Now try to carry this process further. Once the
soul has extracted a thought from the picture, it has finished with it.
Nothing more can be done except to formulate thoughts about the thought
— an absurd procedure which soon dries up.

It is quite
different with creative thinking. Here a man is himself productive. His
thoughts take form as realities in outer life; here he is working after the
example of Nature herself. That is how it is with a man who goes beyond mere
observation and reflective thinking and allows something not to be gained
from observation to arise in his soul. All spiritual-scientific truths
require a productive disposition in the soul. In the case of these truths all
mere reflective thinking is bad and leads to deception. But the truths
attainable by creative thought are limited, for man is weak in the face of
the creative wisdom of the world. There is no end to the things from which we
can derive truths by reflective thought; but creative thought, although the
field open to it is restricted, brings about a heightening of productive
power; the soul is refreshed and its scope extended. Indeed, the soul becomes
more and more inwardly divine, in so far as it reflects in itself an
essential element of the divine creative activity in the world.

So we have these two distinct
kinds of truth, one reached by creative thought, the other by reflective
thought. This latter kind, derived from the investigation of existent things
or current experience, will always lead to abstractions; under its influence
the soul is deprived of nourishment and tends to dry up. The truth that is
not gained from immediate experience is creative; its strength helps man to
find a place in the world where he can co-operate in shaping the future.

The past can be
approached only by reflective thought, while creative thought opens a way
into the future. Man thus becomes a responsible creator of the future. He
extends the power of his Ego into the future, in so far as he comes to
possess not merely the truths derived from the past by reflective thinking,
but also those that are gained by creative thinking and point towards the
future.

Herein lies the
liberating influence of creative thinking. Anyone who is active in the
striving for truth will soon find how he is impoverished by mere reflective
thinking. He will come to understand how the devotee of reflective thinking
fills his mind with phantom ideas and bloodless abstractions. Such a man may
feel like an outcast, condemned to a mere savouring of truth and may come to
doubt whether his spirit can play any part in shaping the world. On the other
hand, a man who experiences a truth gained by creative thinking will find
that it nourishes and warms his soul and gives it new strength for every
stage in life. It fills him with joy when he is able to grasp truths of this
kind and discovers that in bringing them to bear on the phenomena of life he
can say to himself: Now I not only understand what is going on there, but I
can explain it in the light of having known something of it
previously.

With the aid of
spiritual-scientific truths we can now approach man himself. He cannot be
understood merely by reflective thinking, but now we can comprehend him
better and better, while our feeling of unity with the world and our interest
in it are continually enhanced. We experience joy and satisfaction at every
confirmation of spiritual-scientific truths that we encounter. This is what
makes these truths so satisfying: we have first to grasp them before we can
find them corroborated in actual life, and all the while they enrich us
inwardly. We are drawn gradually into unity with the phenomena we experience.
We get away more and more from ourselves, whereas reflective thinking leads
to subtle forms of egoism. In order to find confirmation of truths gained by
creative thinking we have to go out from ourselves and look for their
application in all realms of life. It is these truths that liberate us from
ourselves and imbue us in the highest degree with a sense of truth and a
feeling for it.

Feelings of this
kind have been alive in every genuine seeker after truth. They were deeply
present in the soul of Goethe when he declared: “Only that which is
fruitful is true” — a magnificent, luminous saying of far —
reaching import. But Goethe was also well aware that men must be closely
united with truth if they are to understand one another. Nothing does more to
estrange men from one another than a lack of concern for truth and the search
for truth. Goethe also said: “A false doctrine cannot be refuted, for
it rests on a conviction that the false is true.”
[ 27 ]
Obviously there
are falsities that can be logically disproved, but that is not what Goethe
means. He is convinced that a false viewpoint cannot be refuted by logical
conclusions, and that the fruitful application of truth in practical life
should be our sole guide-line in our search for truth.

It was because
Goethe was so wonderfully united with truth that he was able to sketch the
beautiful poetic drama,
Pandora,
which he began to write in 1807. Though only a fragment,
Pandora
is a ripe product of his creative genius — so powerful in every line,
that anyone who responds to it must feel it to be an example of the purest,
grandest art. We see in it how Goethe was able to make a start towards the
greatest truths — but then lacked the strength to go further. The task
was too arduous for him to carry through; but we have enough of it to get
some idea of how deeply he had penetrated into the problems of spiritual
education. He had a clear vision of everything that the soul has to overcome
in order to rise higher; he understood everything we learnt yesterday about
anger and the fettered Prometheus, and have learnt today about that other
educator of the soul, the sense of truth.

How closely
related these two things are in their effects on the soul can be seen also in
the facial expressions they call forth. Let us picture a man under the
influence of anger, and another man upon whom truth is acting as an inward
light. The first man is frowning — why? In such cases the brow is
knitted because an excessive force is working inwardly, like a poison, to
hold down a surplus of egoism which would like to destroy everything that
exists alongside and separate from the man himself. In the clenched fist of
anger we see the wrathful self closed up in itself and refusing to go forth
into the outer world. Now compare this with the facial expression of someone
who is discovering truth. When he perceives the light of truth, he too may
frown, but in his case the wrinkled brow is a means whereby the soul expands,
as though it would like to grasp and absorb the whole world with devoted
love. Observe, too, the eyes of a man who is trying to overhear the world's
secrets. His eyes are shining, as though to encompass everything around him
in the outer world. He is released from himself; his hand is not clenched,
but held out with a gesture that seeks to absorb the being of the
world.

The whole
difference between anger and truth is thus expressed in human physiognomy and
gesture. Anger thrusts the human being deeper into himself. If he strives for
truth, his being expands into the outer world; and the more united he becomes
with the outer world, the more he turns away from the truths gained by
reflective thinking to those gained by creative thinking. Therefore, Goethe
in his
Pandora
brings into opposition with each other certain characters who can be taken to
represent forces at work in the human soul. They are intended to express
symbolically the relationships between the characteristics and capacities of
the soul.

When you open
Pandora,
you come upon something remarkable and highly significant at the very start.
On the side of Prometheus, the stage is loaded with tools and implements
constructed by man. In all these, human energies have been at work, but in a
certain sense it is all rough and ready. On the side of Epimetheus, the other
Titan, there is a complete contrast. Here everything is perfectly finished;
we see not so much what man creates, but a bringing together of what Nature
has already produced. It is all the result of reflective thinking. Here we
have combination and shaping, a symmetrical ordering of Nature's work. On the
side of Prometheus, unsymmetry and roughness; on the side of Epimetheus,
elegant and harmonious products of Nature, culminating in a view of a
wonderful landscape. What does all this signify? We need only consider the
two contrasted characters: Prometheus the creative thinker, Epimetheus the
reflective thinker. With Prometheus we find the products mainly of creative
thinking. Here, although man's powers are limited and clumsy, he is
productive. He cannot yet shape his creations as perfectly as Nature shapes
her own; but they are all the outcome of his own powers and tools. He is also
deficient in feeling for scenes of natural beauty.

On the side of
Epimetheus, the reflective thinker, we see the heritage of the past, brought
into symmetrical order by himself. And because he is a reflective thinker, we
see in the background a beautiful landscape which gives its own special
pleasure to the human eye. Epimetheus now comes forward and discloses his
individual character. He explains that he is there to experience the past,
and to reflect upon past occurrences and the visible world. But in his speech
he reveals the dissatisfaction that this kind of attitude can at times call
forth in the soul. He feels hardly any difference between day and night. In
brief, the figure of Epimetheus shows us reflective thinking in its most
extreme form. Then Prometheus comes forward carrying a torch and emerging
from the darkness of night. Among his followers are smiths; they set to work
on the man-made objects that are lying around, while Prometheus makes a
remarkable statement that will not be misunderstood if we are alive to
Goethe's meaning. The smiths extol productivity and welcome the fact that in
the course of production many things have to be destroyed. In a one-sided way
they extol fire. A man who is an all-round reflective thinker will not praise
one thing at the expense of another. He casts his eye over the whole.
Prometheus, however, says at once:

In partiality let the active man

Find his pleasure

He extols
precisely the fact that to be active entails the acceptance of limitations.
In Nature, the right is established when the wrong destroys itself. But to
the smiths Prometheus says: Carry on doing whatever can be done. He is the
creative man; he emerges with his torch from the darkness of night in order
to show how from the depths of his soul the truth gained by his creative
thinking comes forth. Unlike Epimetheus, he is far from a dreamlike feeling
that night and day are all one. Nor does he experience the world as a dream.
For his soul has been at work, and in its own dark night it has grasped the
thoughts which now emerge from it. They are no dreams, but truths for which
the soul has bled. By this means the soul advances into the world and gains
release from itself; but at the same time it incurs the danger of losing
itself. This does not yet apply to Prometheus himself, but when a man
introduces one-sidedness into the world, the danger appears among his
descendants.

Phileros, the
son of Prometheus, is already inclined to love and cherish and enjoy the
products of creative work, while his father Prometheus is still immersed in
the stream of life's creative power. In Phileros we are shown the power of
creative thinking developed in a one-sided way. He rushes out into life, not
knowing where to search for enjoyment. Prometheus cannot pass on to his son
his own fruitfully creative strength, and so Phileros appears
incomprehensible to Epimetheus, who out of his own rich experience would like
to counsel him on his headlong career.

We are then
magnificently shown what mere reflective thinking involves. This is connected
with the myth that Zeus, having fettered Prometheus to the rock, imposes
Pandora, the all-gifted, on mankind.

Most beautiful and gifted she approached

The amazed watcher, moving with noble grace,

Her gracious look inquiring whether I,

Like to my sterner brother, would repel her,

But all too strongly were my heart-beats stirred,

With sense bemused my charming bride I welcomed.

Towards the mysterious dowry then I turned,

The earthen vessel, tall and shapely, stood

Close-sealed ...

Prometheus had
warned his brother against this gift from the gods. But Epimetheus, with his
different character, accepts the gift, and when the earthen vessel is opened,
all the afflictions that can befall mankind come pouring out. Only one thing
is left in the vessel — Hope.

Who, then, is
Pandora and what does she signify? Truly a mystery of the soul is concealed
in her. The fruits of reflective thinking are dead products, an abstract
reflection of the mechanical thoughts forged by Hephaestus. This wisdom is
powerless in the face of the universally creative wisdom from which the world
has been born. What can this abstract reflection give to mankind?

We have seen how
this kind of truth can be sterile and can lay waste the soul, and we can
understand how all the afflictions that fall on mankind come pouring out of
Pandora's vessel. In Pandora we have to see truth without the powers of
creativity, the truth of reflective thinking, a truth which builds up a
mechanised thought-picture in the midst of the world's creative life.
For the mere reflective thinker only one thing remains. While the creative
thinker unites his Ego with the future and gets free from himself, the
reflective thinker can look to the future only with hope, for he has no part
in shaping it. He can only hope that things will happen. Goethe shows his
deep comprehension of the myth by endowing the marriage of Epimetheus and
Pandora with two children: Elpore (Hope) and Epimeleia (Care), who safeguards
existing things. In fact, man has in his soul two offspring of dead,
abstract, mechanically conceived truth. This kind of truth is unfruitful and
cannot influence the future; it can only reflect what is already there. It
leaves a man with nothing but the hope that what is true will duly come to
pass. This is represented by Goethe with splendid realism in the figure of
Elpore, who, if someone asks her whether this or that is going to happen,
always gives the same answer, yes, yes. If a Promethean man were to stand
before the world and speak of the future, he would say: “I hope for
nothing. With my own forces I will shape the future.” But a reflective
thinker can only reflect on the past and hope for the future; thus Elpore,
when asked whether this or that will happen, replies always, yes, yes. We
hear it again and again. In this way a daughter of reflective thinking is
admirably characterised and her sterility is indicated.

The other
daughter of this reflective thinking, Epimeleia, is she who cares for
existing things. She sets them all in symmetrical order and can add nothing
from her own resources. But all things which fail to develop are increasingly
liable to destruction; hence we see how anxiety about them continually
mounts, and how through mere reflective thinking a destructive element finds
its way into the world. This is wonderfully well indicated by Goethe when he
makes Phileros fall in love with Epimeleia. We see him, burnt up with
jealousy, pursuing Epimeleia, until she takes refuge from him with the Titan
brothers. Strife and dissension come simultaneously on to the scene.
Epimeleia complains that the person she loves is the very one to seek her
life.

Everything that
Goethe goes on to say shows how deeply he had penetrated into the effects of
creative thinking and reflective thinking on the soul. The creative thinking
of the smiths is set in wonderful contrast to the outlook of the shepherds;
whilst the latter take what Nature offers, the former work on the products of
Nature and transform them. Therefore Prometheus says of the shepherds: they
are seeking peace, but they will not find a peace that satisfies their
souls:

Go your ways in peace; but peace

You will not find.

For a wish
merely to preserve things as they are leads only to the unproductive side of
Nature.

The truths which
belong to creative thinking and reflective thinking respectively are thus set
before us in the figures of Prometheus and Epimetheus, and in all the
characters connected with them. They represent those soul-forces which can
spring from an excessive, one-sided predilection for one or other way of
striving after truth. And after we have seen how disastrous are the
consequences of these extremes, we are shown finally the one and only remedy
— the co-operation of the Titan brothers. The drama leads on to an
outbreak of fire in a property owned by Epimetheus. Prometheus, who is
prepared to demolish a building if it no longer serves its purpose, advises
his brother to make all speed to the spot and do all he can to halt the
destruction. But Epimetheus no longer cares for that; he is thinking about
Pandora and is lost in his recollection of her. Interesting also is a
dialogue between the brothers about her:

Prometheus:

Her form sublime, from ancient dark emerging,

Came near me also. To make another like her,

Even Hephaestus would have failed in that.

Epimetheus:

Art thou, too, prating of this fabled birth?

From ancient gods, a mighty race, she springs:

Uranione, Hera's peer, and sister

Of Zeus himself.

Prometheus:

And yet Hephaestus, for her rich adornment,

Made for her head a net of shining gold,

Weaving with subtle hand the finest threads.

In every
sentence spoken by Prometheus we see how mechanised, abstract limitations
obsess his mind. Then Eos, the Dawn, appears. She is an unlit being who
precedes and heralds the sun, but also contains its light within herself
already. She does not simply emerge from the darkness of night; she
represents a transition to something which has overcome night. Prometheus
appears with his torch because he has just come out of the night. The
artificial light he carries indicates how his creative work proceeds from the
night's darkness. Epimetheus can indeed admire the sunlight and its gifts,
but he experiences everything as in a dream. He is an example of pure
reflective thinking. The way in which light can escape the attention of a
soul absorbed in creative activity is shown by what Prometheus says in the
light of day. His people, he says, are called upon not merely to observe the
sun and the light, but to be themselves a source of illumination. Now Eos,
Aurora, comes forward. She calls upon men to be active everywhere in doing
right. Phileros, already having sought death, should unite with the forces
which will make it possible for him to rescue himself. The smiths, who are
working within the limits of their creative thinking, and the shepherds, who
accept things as they are, are now joined by the fishermen. And we see how
Eos gives them advice:

Morning of youth, dawning of day,

More beautiful than ever,

From the unfathomed ocean

I bring you now.

Awake, shake off your sleep,

You dwellers in the bay

By cliffs encircled,

You fishermen, arise,

And ply your craft.

With speed spread out your nets

Around the well-known waters,

A splendid catch is certain

When my voice cheers you on.

Swim, you swimmers! Dive, you divers!

Watch, you watchers on the heights!

May the shores and seas together

Swarm with swift abounding life!

Then we are
shown in a wonderful way how Phileros is rescued on the surging flood and
unites his own strength with the strength of the waves. The active creative
power in him is thus united with the creative power in Nature. So the
elements of Prometheus and Epimetheus are reconciled.

Thus Goethe
offers a solution rich in promise, by showing how knowledge gained from
nature by reflective thinking can be fired with productive energy by the
creative thinking element. This latter acquires its rightful strength by
receiving, in loyalty to truth, what the gods “up there”
bestow:

Take note of this:

What is desirable, you feel down here;

What is to be given, they know up there.

You Titans make a great beginning,

But the way to the eternal good, the forever beautiful,

That is the work of the gods; they ensure it.

The union of
Prometheus and Epimetheus in the human soul will bring salvation for them and
for mankind. The whole drama is intended to indicate that through an
all-round grasping of truth the entire human race, and not only individuals,
will find satisfaction. Goethe wished to show that an understanding of the
real nature of truth will unite humanity and foster love and peace among men.
Then Hope, also, is transformed in the soul — Hope who says yes to
everything but is powerless to bring anything about. The poem was to have
ended with the transformed Elpore, Elpore thraseia, coming forward to tell us
that she is no longer a prophetess but is to be incorporated into the human
soul, so that human beings would not merely cherish hopes for the future but
would have the strength to co-operate in bringing about whatever their own
productive power could create. To believe in the transformation wrought by
truth upon the soul — that is the whole perfected truth which
reconciles Prometheus and Epimetheus.

Naturally, these
sketchy indications can bring out only a little of all that can be drawn from
the poem. The deep wisdom that called forth this fragment from Goethe will
disclose itself first to those who approach it with the support of a
spiritual-scientific way of thinking. They can experience a satisfying,
redeeming power which flows out from the poem and quickens them.

We must not fail
to mention a remarkably beautiful phrase that Goethe included in his
Pandora.
He says that the divine
wisdom which flows into the world must work in harmony with all that we are
able to achieve through our own Promethean power of creative thinking. The
element that comes to meet us in the world and teaches us what wisdom is,
Goethe called the Word. That, which lives in the soul and must unite itself
with the reflective thinking of Epimetheus, is the Deed of Prometheus. So the
union of the Logos or Word with the Deed gives rise to the ideal that Goethe
wished to set before us in his
Pandora
as the fruit of a life rich in
experiences. Towards the end of the poem, Prometheus makes a remarkable
statement: “A real man truly celebrates the deed.” This is
the truth that remains hidden from the reflective thinking element in the
soul.

If we open
ourselves to this whole poem, we can come to realise the heroic yearning for
development felt by men such as Goethe, and the great modesty which prevents
them from supposing that by reaching a certain stage they have done enough
and need not try to go further. Goethe was an apprentice of life up to his
last day, and always recognised that when a man has been enriched by an
experience he must overcome what he has previously held to be
true.

When as a young
man, Goethe was beginning to work on
Faust,
and had occasion to introduce some translations
from the Bible, he decided that the words “In the beginning was the
Word”, should be rendered as “in the beginning was the
Deed”. At this same time he wrote a fragment on Prometheus.
[ 28 ]
There we see the young Goethe as altogether active and Promethean, confident
that simply by developing his own forces, not fructified by cosmic wisdom, he
could progress. In his maturity, with a long experience of life behind him,
he realised that it was wrong to underestimate the Word, and that Word and
Deed must be united. In fact, Goethe revised parts of his
Faust
while he was writing his
Pandora.
We can understand how
Goethe came by degrees to maturity only if we realise the nature of truth in
all its forms.

It will always
be good for man if he wrestles his way to realising that truth can be
apprehended only by degrees. Or take a genuine, honest, all-round
seeker after truth who is called upon to bring forcibly before the world some
truth he has discovered. It will be very good if he reminds himself that he
has no grounds for pluming himself on this one account. There are no grounds
at any time for remaining content with something already known. On the
contrary, such knowledge as we have gained from our considerations yesterday
and today should lead us to feel that, although the human being must stand
firmly on the ground of the truth he has acquired and must be ready to defend
it, he must from time to time withdraw into himself, as Goethe did. When he
does this, the forces arising from the consciousness of the truth he has
gained will endow him with a feeling for the right standards and for the
standpoint he should make his own. From the enhanced consciousness of truth
we should ever and again withdraw into ourselves and say, with Goethe: Much
that we once discovered and took for truth is now only a dream, a dreamlike
memory; and what we think today, will not survive when we put it to a deeper
test. The words often spoken by Goethe to himself in relation to his own
honest search for truth may well be echoed by every man in his solitary
hours: